slipstream

Text Post

Secret reading

On the way home on the train, I saw a guy who looked like a builder, wearing dirty jeans, a high-visibility jacket, and drinking a can of Carlsberg. On the vacant seat next to him as a magazine called “Stylist” (no, I’ve never heard of it either) with the headline, “Are You Secretly Desperate To Be A Housewife?”. I found myself wondering if the magazine was secretly his.

Posted via email from bsag’s posterous | Comment »

Text Post

Reference managers: advice needed

I’ve recently been having another look at reference managers, and my interest has been piqued by Sente. At the moment, I use Papers for searching for papers, auto-filling the bibliographic meta-data and reading them, then I export to BibTeX format and import to BibDesk. This works OK, but it doesn’t really cover citing references and formatting bibliographies unless I’m writing in LaTeX: sometimes I have to resort to Pages (exporting/importing Word format) to collaborate on documents with colleagues.

I’ve been playing with the Sente demo, and while I much prefer the UI of Papers (and to some extent, the method of importing references in Papers), the note-taking features in Sente 6 are brilliant, and the bibliography formatting works very nicely. Exporting notes to DEVONthink Pro, and adding to them there works beautifully, and then you get the power of the terrific AI searching abilities of DEVONthink too. I’m nervous about entrusting my precious PDF collection to the bowels of the Sente document bundle, so I would probably just link to the PDFs and manually sync the documents using Dropbox. I like the range of import/export formats in Sente, so I would plan on exporting the whole lot (or a subset relevant to a particular manuscript) to a BibTeX file periodically to enable LaTeX authoring, with Sente as the master collection.

So, my academic lazyweb question is this: have any of you had experience of using Sente for serious academic reference collections? Is it good enough to search for, read, make notes on papers and use for referencing on it’s own? I’m getting a bit tired of using multiple applications, excellent though Papers is, in many ways.

Posted via email from bsag’s posterous | Comment »

Photo Post 28NOTES

Via notes.husk.org Zoom

blech:

roomthily:

redesigning graphics from 1950s science textbooks by R.A. Gallant (via Wired)

I wonder if I’m the only person to find the originals better than the remakes? They’re far less fussy and seem to be somewhat clearer. The remakes rely too much on being pretty.

I agree. It’s a good example of pointless 3D graphics making it much harder to see where the points fall on the y-axis. If you look at the original and the remake and try to work out the altitude at which auroras occur, it’s much easier on the original. Unless you need three axes, 3D graphs are pretty but useless.

Text Post

Relaxing

A bit of perfect time: Mr. Bsag and I are sitting on the sofa reading, listening to Tallis and Byrd, with Bella nestled between us.

Posted via email from bsag’s posterous | Comment »

Text Post

Everybody wants to be a cat

I’m watching The Aristocats on TV, which I haven’t seen for years. There aren’t as many good tunes as The Jungle Book, but this one is great.

Posted via email from bsag’s posterous | Comment »

Text Post

The comfort seeker

A few of Bianca’s many favourite sleeping places. The first picture explains why we end up with cat hair all over our bedlinen, while the second shows that Mr. Bsag is a big softie. He gave up his cushion for Bianca to sleep on the top of his studio desk, while he used a few layers of bubble wrap on his hard chair.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from bsag’s posterous | Comment »

Text Post

Peacock spider

That is a really beautiful spider. I’m not usually a big fan of spiders, but jumping spiders are brilliant, and this one (Maratus volans) is gorgeous with all the iridescence. There are more lovely pictures of both the colourful male and the drabber female here.

[via Neatorama]

Posted via email from bsag’s posterous | Comment »

Text Post

Fireworks and pets

You know how pets are supposed to hate fireworks? Our cat Bella has just jumped excitedly up on the desk, and is watching the firework display in our neighbour’s garden with great interest. Our other cat, Bianca, is fast asleep on the floor of Mr. Bsag’s studio, oblivious to all the bangs and flashes. I’m very glad that we don’t have pets that you have to sedate during fireworks season, but this is a bit ridiculous.

Posted via email from bsag’s posterous | Comment »

Text Post 1NOTES

Prototype slimline UK plug

This is a brilliant bit of design. I find US and European 2-pin plugs rather flimsy (they often feel as if they will pull out of the socket accidentally with little provocation), but they have the advantage of being small and having a relatively flat profile. UK plugs are solid and secure but relatively gigantic. Also, if you’ve ever stepped — bare-footed — on to a UK plug with its pins uppermost, you know how painful it can be.

I love the fact that the unfolded plug also has the advantage of a ring-shaped handle on the back, which would make removal much easier for everyone, including people with arthritis or other conditions which lower dexterity and hand strength.

Posted via email from bsag’s posterous | Comment »

Text Post

Waving from Google to Posterous

Waving from Google to PosterousI’m trying out the posterous-robot to see if posting from Google Wave to Posterous actually works. Wave takes a bit of getting your head around, I’m finding. I can see that possibilities are enormous, but at the moment, I feel like I did when I first went on the Internet, many years ago…

via google-wave-robot

Posted via web from bsag’s posterous | Comment »